I gave up on daily yoga pretty quickly. Finding at least half an hour of calm, quiet time to practice, without interruptions, while I had energy to do it, without sacrificing my sanity-saving morning shower? It just wasn’t happening. Other things took precedence.

Instead, I’ve been trying to squeeze in mini workouts every morning. It’s going well, actually. Ryan thinks my jumping jacks are hilarious, and I think Margot’s jumping jacks are also hilarious, so everyone is at least entertained while I sweat. This is certainly not the most effective way to get in shape quickly, but that’s fine with me. My only goal is to move more and feel more comfortable in my body. If any of my muscles feel sore the next day, I’m happy.

And you know what? My muscles are sore. I’m making progress. It’s minuscule, but it’s something, and that’s satisfying.

The smoothies, on the other hand, are sticking around. The girls don’t usually care for anything but their favorite chocolate smoothie with some spinach thrown in, so if I’m sharing with them that’s usually what we have. Baby boy has yet to meet a smoothie he doesn’t like, though. He and David and I share all kinds of green combos for breakfast a couple times a week.

We keep bags of our favorite frozen fruits on hand–berries, pineapple, cherries, peaches–and we always have bananas. Sometimes I’ll toss in a frozen acai packet. I try to include almond butter or half an avocado for protein but that doesn’t always work out. One of these days I want to spend some time measuring out smoothie ingredients to freeze together; then I can grab a bag, add some liquid, blend it up and go. Easy peasy. It just takes time to prep, and I always find something else to do instead. Ah well.

I will say this about green smoothies: they’ve made a noticeable difference in how I feel. We don’t own a scale so I’ve no idea if I’ve lost any weight, but I am much less bloaty. My gut is happier; I’ll let you infer from that what you will. When I balance a smoothie with enough protein, I graze less…which basically means I’m not sneaking OREOs at 9:30 AM.

So while I didn’t quite create lasting “habits” for myself, I’ve made some small healthy changes that I feel good about. Progress has to start somewhere, right?

Help me shake things up a little; one can only do so many squats before one gets bored. What are your favorite body weight exercises? Besides burpees, of course, because we all know burpees are theee worst.